"As there are a growing number of people needing and wanting to learn properly, what is the best, most accurate and efficient way of learning to script? What about those who want to expand their use of scripting tools such as awk, sed, perl and others? ---- This discussion is part of the Toolbox for IT Featured Discussion program. If you would like to lead a future Featured Discussion, please email moderator at toolbox.com. Visit Pauls blog, Paul's Linux Journal, at it.toolbox.com/blogs/pauls-linux-journal/"

People are different in how they learn so I think there is no one right answer to this question. I feel the most important thing in learning how to script is practice. Script and script and script some more. Remember to test, test, test, test your scripts.
I only want to add one more thing. If your scripts are run from cron, make sure the script sets up the environment it needs. I've goofed countless times by writing a script and testing it only to have it fail when it's put in cron because it isn't in my environment any more.

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Jalal Hajigholamali

September 01, 2011 12:38 PM

Hi,

First of all, script programmer must familiar with OS (Linux)
capability of commands plus some arts in programming.

Learning style is individual, so this I'm not sure it is possible to answer this as the question is stated.

The one comment I can make with surety is that no matter what method is chosen, practice is essential. As languages evolve, more efficiencies become available, so keeping up with developments is part of that ongoing practice.

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DACREE

September 01, 2011 01:52 PM

These days I think one of the best way to learn scripting would be to join the shellscript group on toolbox. http://unix.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/shellscript-l/
I follow that group pretty closely. It's a huge advantage to be able to follow the discussions and see how different people approach the same problem from such different strategies.
The active people in that group are highly skilled and I learn allot from them.

That being said, one of the best approaches to learning programming in general is to identify a problem for which you don't have a solution and develop a solution in the language you want to learn. The best part is having resources like this website to go to when you get stuck.

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pneaveill

September 01, 2011 07:10 PM

@ Dacree -- I believe that I am already a member there at the group and have learned much just following along with the various things.

@Jalil -- That is the question though: how to learn the art of scripting/programming quickly and efficiently?

@Deb -- true enough on the individual styles and all of that. Yet, not sure if that evades the question to some degree.

@all -- am in the class, a fairly active member of many forums attempting to learn. Am also working through many of the issues/ suggestions raised. Am wondering what is missing and how to go about learning even more efficiently.

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pneaveill

September 01, 2011 09:04 PM

This looks interesting and may help someone:
http://linuxforums.tradepub.com/free-offer/advanced-bash-scripting-guide/w_advb01?sr=hicat&_t=hicat:830